My Ninth Day

 So today is the day. I started out going over the warm-ups that were similar to the problems on the worksheet. I controlled the class pretty well and stopped talking. I had asked questions of the students as I did it. Then I did a few fraction problems with the class. The class thought they were easy and I had students eager to answer the questions. They are not normally that eager to answer the questions. I was glad to see that. So then I handed out the worksheet. The students all thought that it was a test. It took we a while to convince them it wasn't. The first ten minutes of the worksheet went well. However I let it get too loud. I had two students tell me we were too loud and realized that I should have done something earlier to control the noise. I knew it was going to be hard to get them back at this point, but I did my best. The worksheet did not take as long as I thought it would which also caused problems. I did get the smart student to help other students once they were done with the worksheet. I tried to help the student who has been absent for a long time, but the student was too frustrated and fed up to really do anything. So I let the student be. I did a good job about not letting every student leave my classroom for whatever reason they can think up. I however did not have any consequences for being out of their seat or talking. I talked with my adviser about having that line and the types of consequences I can use. I don't know if I can start handing out consequences and ramp up the rule now since I am almost done teaching this class. However it is something to keep in my mind for next semester. I have to have a firm line. I have to say sit back in your sit and warn them that if it happens again then there will be a consequence. I am just not comfortable with handing out consequences now, but I have been slowly realizing that I have to or else they will walk all over me.

My adviser and I also talked about how the last bit of the class went so poorly because they can't focus on the same activity for that long. Which I have began to slowly realize as I have been teaching. We have also talked about that in our Educational Technology class and other conferences. These students are of the digital age and are used to having information at the touch of a button. They play video games and surf the net. They except things to go fast and be entertained the whole time. So my adviser and I talked about having them do five problems in ten minutes then bringing the class back together to share answers or ask questions.So next week when I give them their performance assessment I will definitely chunk it out and separate it. I will also occasionally bring the class back together to talk about how it is going.

Another comment my adviser made was that I was standing up front next to the document camera too much. This is something that I have been struggling with. I am too attached to the front and the document camera. I need to walk around to the tables and talk to the class in the middle of the classroom. I know I should do it and have talked about how I should in classroom management class. However when you are thrown into the classroom you don't always remember to do everything. I think it is also just getting comfortable in the classroom and finding the moments you can move about the class.

So the class got a little crazy while my adviser was here. But I enjoyed talking through strategies to get better and helping me improve my skills. If I do a lesson similar to this again I now know that I have to keep an eye on the class as well as the individuals. I thought that it went very badly once I let the students go. However my adviser pointed something that went well that I had not thought of. I guess it is just because I focus on the negative. He said I really kept my calm and composure when the students were getting all crazy. So I think it went well. There were a lot of small things that I did well and there were other things that need to be improved. I now really understand how to improve my teaching and more about what a teacher has to constantly keep in mind.

I sort of wish I had been able to be observed earlier. I was too nervous for this and pushed it back as possible. I now realize that it isn't as scary as I would have thought and I would have benefited from having it earlier. I could have taken my advisers suggestions and implemented them and worked on them more. I can't really make any BIG changes now since my time is over. I do have things to keep in mind and be conscious of as I continue to teach.

My Eigth Day

Today was a little crazy, but I handled. I moved students into a new seating chart. I think I am done moving people and I have to enforce them not talking. I swear no matter who she sits next to she is talking. I will have to be on her. Some students said they couldn't sit in back because they can't see. I sort of just suspected that they didn't want to sit where I put them, but I honored that to move them on the other side of the classroom. Since I spent time moving them I had to cut a lot of the book work. I went too fast during the example problem. A lot of the students seemed to be engaged, but I have to stop and get everyone. We just barely finished the problem. I should have just done that problem with the class. I could have slowed down and asked more questions if that was the only thing we were doing. I sped through the problem cause I wanted to get through it because they will be doing a similar problem tomorrow. I worry if they will be able to do the problem tomorrow. Since I was speeding through the problem I was talking and writing too much. I didn't have my eyes on the class enough. I should have got up and walked around more. Also my notes for this problem weren't that organized. I think I need to do everything on lined paper to keep everything neat. I know this will be a continuing struggle to make my hand writing neat. However right now in my practicum I am doing most of my work on blank paper which does not help my writing. I need to be organized with my instruction, so that the students can be more organized. However I am not supposed to be completely organized since I am just starting out. So I am going with the flow as much as possible.

The good outcomes of today is that I think I have got a lot of my students writing more stuff down. I think they are learning how to take notes. I had students who are normally disengaged writing everything down and asking questions about stuff. So the behavior of writing notes is good, but we will see how much they retain.

Tomorrow I will have to check with all the students as they do their work. I will try to direct them to their notes when they get to the similar problem. All tomorrow will be review and modeling. Then they will work on a worksheet. I will make sure they take notes at the beginning of class. Then direct them to those notes first when they begin to ask questions. I know who is not getting it and I will do my best to check in with those students and make sure they got it.

Since I am being observed tomorrow I was supposed to meet with my adviser at the end of this day. However we went into Lockdown level 1 for about the last ten minutes of class. The cops were dealing with some incident in the neighborhood south of the school. They called and said we should go on lockdown. We closed the door, kept all the students in the classroom, and closed the shades. Since we were on lockdown my adviser couldn't meet with me in person and I talked to with him about my lesson on the phone later. But the timing was just crazy. I have been here observing for a month and teaching for almost a month while I was here I have been a part of a fire drill and a lockdown.

So hopefully all goes well tomorrow because my adviser is coming to observe me. It should be an interesting and high energy.

My Seventh Day

So today I read to them. Although I went quickly through it. I also forgot that the document camera was zoomed in and they couldn't see the book I was reading from. I was hoping they would find it cooler, but of course I am just a geek. I wonder if they will like it when I refer back to it.

Class went well, but I had to repeat myself several times because students weren't listening. There was also confusion between the journal page we were in and the page of the textbook we were on. I made note in my head to make this more clear. I think it is something to consider when implementing math journals in class. I am doing research on the use of math journals. I will have to research how tho structure this better. I kind of know how the kids feel. I felt the same way in Teacher Research or Literacy class not knowing in which journal or notebook to write in. I am learning a lot about what is working with the journals and what is not working with the journals. Some students were really dragging their feet and didn't have their books, journals, or pencils. I think I caught students who weren't writing sooner and got them to get their journals sooner. I don't know how much they were writing. I think I have to get up and walk some more while I am waiting for them to copy stuff down. I noticed one student was writing more stuff down and I was glad to see that. Before he was talking too much and not writing down enough.

I had a lot of talking today though. I don't think it was one student specifically, but several students. I stopped what I was doing to talk to them about being respectful and asked for their attention. I told them that their behavior needs to improve because my teacher is coming to this class on Thursday. I threatened them with referrals as well. I don't know if it worked. I think I will have to real change up the seats, so that I follow through with changes that I talked about.

So all in all it wasn't a great day, but it wasn't exactly a bad day. I think I am getting a hang of it. I am not perfect and things aren't just like I want them, but that is the life of the practicum teaching. However I think I have really bounced back form that really bad day I had last week.

I am looking forward to what I have planned for my adviser because I think I am better at controlling a class when they are working on homework. I don't know how well I am doing with controlling the whole class during whole class direct instruction. This may be because I am used to one on one tutoring more than actually teaching. I am still a little worried about my adviser coming, but I think I like the structure and what I have planned for that day. I am worried about what they will say.

So here is hoping this week ends well. Time seems to be moving so fast and yet so slow. My unit is almost over and I can't believe it.

My Sixth Day

So today I had them finish the 8 question clicker quiz. I had students who finished put their answers back in the clicker since it does not save the answers from a previous session. Everyone finished the quiz today and I got students on task doing homework right after that. The students who are really squirmy didn't settle down to get anything done, but I caught their antics and made them at least open their book. I had trouble getting not only the squirmy ones to settle, but the advanced students as well. The student that I am worrying about is getting all the material knows all the right answers, but can't show their work or does not turn in the work. Although I got a few more students to get work done. I will have to remind students about it some more tomorrow. I hope to have everyone turn in the homework by Friday. I will have to have students take the test after school for those who missed it or didn't finish it. I know that students who are in math lab can take my test during that period. So I know that helps some of the students. Tomorrow we will work on adding and subtracting decimals, but I think the main focus will be word problems and figuring out which decimal is greater than the other. I know my students have adding and subtracting decimals down, but I hope to challenge them more and build their problem solving skills. This week will be review and word problems. It will be applying everything they know. I hope that this does not make students bored.

My Fifth Day

Today went better. I began to clamp down more and get the class to move things along. However I didn't realize that the class would only get half of the quiz done today. Only one person finished the 8 question quiz and that is the super smart student that has been getting everything. I think they enjoyed working with the clickers to take their quiz, but it was hard to get some students to write down their work. Which is now even more vitally important since they will have to re input their answers on Monday. It was a good day all in all though. I did have some talking problems and some passing of notes. I snatched away the notes though. I will have to move kids on Monday.

My Fourth Day

Oh goodness was today a disaster for sooo many different reasons. But let me start at the beginning.

First there was an assembly about staying in school and being drug free. The Harlem Ambassadors came today to talk to the students. The Harlem Ambassadors are similar to the Harlem globetrotters, but they also spread good messages to students. You must be drug free at all times and have a college degree to play with the Harlem globetrotters. They have a game at McNary High School tonight at 7. Some students won free tickets to the game. The students that I was sitting around were actually pretty well behaved. I had to tell some students to quiet down. I think that the students in front of me did not like sitting near a teacher so they moved up the bleachers. They also could have moved up because they wanted to win a free ticket though. I think this assembly went better than the other one I observed. I think the main difference was that this assembly was early in the morning while the other was at the end of the day. Students were still somewhat sleepy and in the school mode when they had the assembly after the second period of the day. When the assembly was at the very end of the day students just wanted to leave and start their weekend.

So now onto my fourth period. Students weren't really copying down their learning targets. Which is another reason why I hate that they have to copy down their learning targets. Just more transition and seems pointless to me. Anyways I started in the warmup. I think it went well. We had disagreement on the first one, but I used it as a teaching moment. I called on the more advanced student who is getting all the material easy and had him explain his thinking. I think he is used to knowing the answer and not really explaining. I want to get him to teach and explain more. I then had the students glue in a decimal place sheet into their journals. While they were doing that I talked about my own math journal from college. I told them I am trying to get them to learn the skills so that they know how to keep an organized journal in high school. I told them they can use this journal to study for tests in high school and beyond. This led to some questions about college which I answered quickly then moved along. I worked on two problems on the book next. Except several students did not have a book. They started asking to go to their locker and I knew I had to let them. Then 5 or 6 more students asked to either get water or go to the bathroom. I started excusing the first few, but then stopped to say that since lunch is right before this period that they should do it then. Some students went back to their seat others tried to take advantage of it throughout the period. I was bombarded with students to asking to leave and I just don't know how to say no. I lost control at this point and knew I couldn't get it back. I excused one student to go to the bathroom and he was gone for about 10 minutes. It was much too long. My cooperating teacher went to go get him. He must have been trying to skip class. That was hard to deal with. I had noticed that he would often ask to be excused and take a long time to get back. It was hard to go on at this point.

Then near the end of the class as I was trying to give directions a student had gotten his pencil stuck in the pencil sharpener. Since I didn't want to talk over the sharpener I had the student unplug it. That got the class real distracted. Then the student did not have a pencil and tried to fix the machine.

I started them on the homework after this, but forgot and ran out of time to have the students write down the assignment. I know they won't do the assignment so I will make sure the students get this weeks assignment done on Friday after the quiz. I think I am approaching homework and assignments with a high school frame of mind. However I don't know how homework should work for a middle school. This makes me think that I am really just cut out for high school even more.

I tried to get students who were talking to much to move into a new seat, but of course complained. I just can not be firm enough and it is so hard for me. I let them sit next to each other and get a second chance, but they ended up passing notes instead of talking. I asked for the note and she did not give it to me. She eventually tore it up and threw it away. I wonder what was on it and if the student was talking about me. I had another student not even realize they needed their journal until the period was almost over. I said in my head damn should have caught that earlier. At least the student who for two days in a row forgot his binder has started to bring it more often.

It was a tough day and I had trouble just getting through the period. I can't handle the students. I don't know if I have their respect and I don't know how I can do that when I am only here for a few weeks. It takes time to build respect. I also don't know how to be firm with the students. Plus I can't make quick decisions on my feet or else I will lose control like I did today.

I hope it gets better from here. Thankfully I can rest tomorrow. Then on top of having a bad day I am mulling over what I am going to cover next week. Plus trying to schedule something interesting or worthwhile when my adviser visits. I am afraid of what my adviser will say about my teaching. I keep thinking that he will say I am doing too much lecturing. I know I am, but I am trying to not radically change what the students are used. I have been doing some things different, but not too different. I hate direct instruction and the lecturing I am doing, but I don't think my students can handle anything else. I also don't want to reinvent the wheel and introduce new things this far into the year. Plus I am only here for a few weeks.

I don't know if I want to start a new unit and move into multiplying decimals at the end of next week. It will be hard. I want to use next week to do more activities, practice, and word problems on estimating and adding/subtracting decimals. Then start multiplying decimals after thanksgiving. However I don't know if this will coincide with my supervising teachers plan. Then of course I will have to make sure to have a good lesson plan for when my adviser comes as well which adds more stress to the whole planning thing.

So to sum everything up I am having bad days in the classroom and have upcoming pressure from grad school causing me to just give up hope. I feel like I am not becoming the teacher that I want to be right now. I have often imagined what kind of teacher I want to be and I am not it right now. I now it is a learning process and that the first few years of teaching I will be a bad teacher. It is just hard on me. I am going to enjoy my time off and relax a little with a good book. This will get my mind off everything for a little bit. Then I will type up Friday's test and ponder over next weeks calendar a little.

So this week is almost over and I don't know how I will get through next week which brings even more challenges. For one it will be my first full week and for two my adviser is coming to visit. Oh man this is going to be a loooooong unit on decimals.

My Third Day

Well considering yesterday students moved around and sat by their friends I had to make a new seating chart. The students got me a little distracted with seating requests and it took a lot of time to get everyone where I wanted. I had to chop my lesson big time. I spent about twenty minutes going through letting students choose what they wanted to buy and estimate the total cost to see if they had enough money. I put Ipod shuffle on the list, harry potter book, and a few other things. Other students added Ipad, ATV, Wii, guitar, and some other expensive technology. I didn't let them buy the Ipad since it cost more than our budget. The class ended up choosing to buy a guitar, video games, and Ipod shuffle. I hope it was an engaging lesson that helped them learn estimating. It got a little rowdy, but I think it went well. I probably should have saved this activity for tomorrow because their is an assembly tomorrow. This activity would have been great on the assembly day and the day before a holiday.

However the students did not write anything down when we were deciding on what to buy. I am just so used to college students and hard working high school students who will write anything that goes on the board. I forgot that 6th graders have not learned to copy everything. I am trying to keep them organized in their math journals as much as possible, but it is hard. I started them on the homework, but I don't think it will get done. I am going to have Friday be a short quiz and then time to work on homework. I will go around and monitor students on that day. I ended with them gluing in the wordle sheet which may have been a bad choice. Since I had to clean stuff up. I thought to save it for last because then when they are checking out at the end of the period anyways they are doing something mindless. Then as I was planning to use every minute of the period the fire alarm went off. I think that means not everyone got it glued in their journal or lost it when the fire alarm went off.

I don't think this fire alarm was planned. It was most likely pulled by a student or going off for other weird reasons. I remember at either college or one of my schools the fire alarm went off because the wires were acting haywire because of dust or something in the wiring. The kids jumped and it was a little chaotic after the alarm went off. I grabbed my jacket real quick and ushered students out of the classroom. I was the last person out of the room and made sure everyone was heading outside. I followed the crowd until we got outside where I was led astray. Some classes or teachers forgot that we had to cross the street for the fire drill. However I learned the hard way where the students need to stand during a fire drill. This alarm went off during second lunch and so some students were having lunch when it went off. There was confusion among students where they should be and confusion among teachers as well. I kept the class calm and settled during the fire drill. Some  boys started playing what looked like scoop and were almost running in to the class behind them. I tried to squash the game, but I couldn't. However I did warn them whenever they got to close to hitting other students in the class.

So today didn't go nearly at all how I planned it since I had to spend so much time on the seating chart and then the fire drill. I am worried that my transitions between activities are not good and I just can't get my sixth graders to do what I want. I found myself repeating directions a lot. I am worried that the students are not getting anything out of my class and will fail the next quiz. I can't spend much time on estimation and the homework though. I have to move on to adding and subtracting decimals. I am really scared that I will not see improvement on my post test. I think I have discovered that I am not really cut out for middle school. Everyone seems to not really want to teach middle school, but when they start they end up loving it. However I am the exception to this rule. So I am doing my best and trying to learn from my mistakes. I am putting on a good face and trying to make decimals as exciting as possible while making sure my students are actually learning.

Also this whole full week teaching thing is draining. I had trouble getting out of bed this morning, but knew I had to. Thank god there is no school on Thursday so I can sleep in and get lesson plans done.